It can be argued that Don Quixote represents a paradigmatic shift in early modern literature. It crystallises its literary form par excellence: the novel. This commentary explains the distinctive place occupied by Cervantes’ request for printing privileges in the Spanish history of copyright. Curiously enough, the writing of the sequel of Don Quixote is also a key moment in which to view authorial attempts to control the text and the franchise created through it. Our purpose is to provide a brief survey of the particular circumstances surrounding what could have been the most valuable printing privilege in Spanish Renaissance literature. The commentary goes on to consider the influence of printing privileges on providing the conditions for the emergence of the novel.

3. The Danger of Writing

When Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) wrote the preface of Don Quixote, he left a precious gem for literary critics and copyright theorists. Obviously, he could not have known how modern copyright doctrines were about to exploit the paternity metaphor to justify themselves in different and imaginative ways.[1] However, in what can be considered an anticipatory gesture, Cervantes wrote a cryptic phrase that haunts the imagination surrounding copyright rationales. While he began with a line that instantly resembles contemporary labour-based theories and paternal literary metaphors of authorship (“it was quite an effort to write the book”; the product is described as “the child of my brains),[2] he turned it into an explosive joke challenging the reader with laughter (“although I seem like Don Quixote’s father, I am his step-father”).[3] In fact, this is just one example among a multitude of narrative and satirical techniques which the book deploys throughout its two parts. Instead of relying on authority or utility as the main justifications for its publication, Cervantes grounded his reasons for publishing the novel on a vision that begins to resemble modern ideas concerning authorship and originality.[4] By erasing the distinction between fact and fiction, Cervantes cited his reason for publishing the work, ironically, as based on the purposeless “pleasure of reading”.[5]

If the author-construct is prevalent in modern fiction,[6] there is no better place to analyse its contradictions and effects than here.[7] Borges (1899-1986) and Foucault (1926-1984) appreciated these elusive features.[8] Furthermore, they did so by distinguishing the novel as a paradigmatic type of production in the symptomatic development of a new kind of excess, a literary authorial subjectivity the instability of which has also fascinated scholars of copyright.[9] Cervantes strategically used paratexts to lock the reader into a relationship with the book,[10] connected the second part of the novel with the first part, and experimented with narrative tools in order to produce what we may define today as “style”.[11] In that sense, Cervantes provides an example of the “danger of writing” that would begin to characterize the modern author function.[12] Instead of writing a chivalric novel, the novel fabricated a distinctive literary apparatus that transgresses literary canons. Cervantes understood that for this transgression to be achieved, a transformation of the protocol of writing was required.[13] His chivalric novel did not provide more of the same.[14] He wrote fiction about fiction, a book about books.[15]

Retrospectively it is thus not surprising to see the book defined as a masterpiece, as the first and greatest of all novels, nor is it a surprise to observe the impact its distinctiveness has had on scholars of copyright.[16] William Patry,[17] Adrian Johns,[18] Joseph Loewenstein[19] and Mark Rose[20] are just a few of many scholars who using use different passages of Cervantes’ book in order to develop their views on the history of copyright. However, what is of interest here is situating the novel in its social and historical context, and more precisely, considering the way in which the technology of the printed book led to the intertwining of the Spanish pre-history of copyright with censorship.[21]

4. Privilege Bureaucracies

In 1604, a request signed by the writer himself was lodged at the Royal Council (Consejo Real) asking for a licence to print and a twenty year royal concession to print Don Quixote in the Kingdom of Castile.[22] The grounds on which the plea was based were not particularly original. Cervantes justified his request on nothing more than the amount of “study and work” he had undertaken in writing the manuscript. As was customary, the submission ended up in the hands of the council's secretaries who had to appoint someone competent to read it.[23] Taking into account the kind of book at stake, it is ironic that Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (1549-1625), chronicler of the Indies, was given the task of reading it.[24] For an historian, it should have been an extraordinary experience to read and assess such an “ambiguously historical” work of fiction.[25] In fact, it seems it was a pleasurable experience for the censor since he did not find any objection, giving a favourable opinion for a licence to be granted. His aprobación highlighted that the novel was going to be of “the taste and entertainment to the people”. It appears to have been a case in which the book “did not pose risk from the censors’ point of view”,[26] for Herrera continued his report suggesting that as “a rule of good government these features should be taken into consideration”. Receiving a positive response from the censor was crucial since it indicated the possibility of the license to print being issued.[27]

On 26 September 1604Cervantes also obtained a book privilege for Don Quixote. However, the royal concession granted did not extend to the twenty year privilege he had requested but only ten years.[28] He rapidly ceded the privilege to a well-known publisher from Madrid, Francisco de Robles (?- ).[29] For Cervantes, dealing with Robles was not unheard of, since he had already sold book privileges of his earlier works to Francisco’s father, Blas de Robles (1542-1592). [30] Roble was then entrusted with the publication of this new work. In the sequence of contracts that constitute the transition from manuscript to print, we need to mention at least two simultaneous steps. While waiting for the bureaucratic steps to be completed, the publisher, Francisco de Robles, commissioned a printing shop in Madrid with the setting and printing of the work. The printer whom Robles employed to be responsible for Don Quixote was Juan de la Cuesta.[31] When the printed copy was ready, the final bureaucratic hurdles consisted of proof-reading and sending to it to the corrector.[32]Indeed, there was a need for the clerk at the Royal Council to certify its “correctness”, that is, to examine that each printed page coincided with the manuscript already submitted by the applicant and subscribed by the clerks.[33] All of this mediation and textual intervention between the printing-shop and the administrative apparatus did not only involve legal and commercial control of book-production in the kingdom but also, and more importantly, it affected the way the book would be produced.[34] In other words, these mediations helped to establish and to produce a remarkable textual stability: a copy named the “original”.[35]Don Quixote was finally certified, licensed and priced on 20 December 1604.[36]

5. Fighting for the Market

For Robles to recuperate the investment made in the publication, to move fast was crucial. All the evidence available suggests that he was in a great hurry to get Don Quixote out as soon as possible.[37] Two novels, one picaresque and the other chivalric, were about to be released at the same time. With competing goods in the market, the battle was going to be fierce.[38] Meanwhile, Robles’ need to make copies quickly available became more acute when the first edition was converted into a best-seller a few months after its appearance.[39] Such rapid success seems to have not been expected by Robles and Cervantes since the privilege granted only covered the Kingdom of Castile and unauthorized copies of Don Quixote began to circulate, especially in Portugal.[40] One of the most notable characteristics of the Portuguese reprints was that the local booksellers sharpened their version by quickly securing (or faking) an approval from an Augustinian friar on behalf of the Inquisition.[41]

The situation seems to have been so problematic that in an attempt to reach these emerging publics, a few months later, Robles brought Cervantes into his struggle to control territories.[42] Not only did the writer apply, obtain and cede to Robles new privileges covering Portugal, Aragon, Valencia[43] and Cataluña[44], but shortly after this, Cervantes also gave him a power of attorney to enable the publisher to take all the steps necessary to enforce these privileges and to stop unauthorized printing.[45] What makes these moves particularly intriguing is the authors’ involvement in assisting and authorizing the publisher when he had already sold him the privileges of Don Quixote.[46]

6. Narrative Authority & Sequels

Reprinted versions were not the only legally doubtful activity affecting Don Quixote. As the deadline of the expiry of the initial privilege approached, a spurious set of adventures following on from the first volume appeared on the market. In 1614 The Second Volume of the Ingenious Knight Don Quixote de la Mancha was published in Tarragona.[47] This publication could be viewed as one of the first cases of unauthorized spin-offs or sequels recorded in modern Spanish literature. Many others would follow. However, anticipating recursive copyright nightmares in establishing the boundaries of what might constitute a work, the pseudo-Quixote was particularly significant because it neither reprinted nor literally copied the text, but continued the saga by providing the characters with new adventures. Unsurprisingly, this innovative encounter between creation and appropriation has attracted a considerable amount of attention in literary and copyright scholarship.[48] For instance, it has been noted that it is in which “we glimpse an early apprehension of the relation between fictional worldmaking and the history of copyright”.[49]

Despite the fact that the spurious novel was probably lawful at the time, and the licence and aprobación had most likely been requested from the corresponding authority, the publication has been used as a platform to revisit contemporary questions around ethics and the legality of writing. Not only has it been suggested that Avellaneda took “unfair advantage” of the situation by taking a well-known plot and a set of literary characters already created,[50] but claims of impropriety or illegality have been by scholars in a manner resembling contemporary debates on copyright and parody.[51] Indeed, just as many of the copyright issues revolved around the delineation of boundaries between “(illegal) imitation and (legal) inspiration”,[52] the value of the sequel has frequently been assessed according to contemporary normative and aesthetic standards. Avellaneda’s wrongfulness has simultaneously transgressed different registers and arguments, from a claim suggesting a presumably libellous or fraudulent character to its straightforward categorization as “theft”, reaching an impasse which reveals a plain logic: the problem with the Avellaneda book was –it has been argued - that it would have never existed without the first Don Quixote.[53]

While the status of the sequel was therefore controversial, its publication led to another interesting twist and a concerned Cervantes’ use of marketing and narrative skills as a way of redressing the spurious novel. Instead of bringing Avellaneda to court, Cervantes responded to him by making a sequel of Don Quixote himself. In an attempt to avoid any confusion with the rival writer, he inscribed a legend in the cover of his new release stating “from the author of the first part”.[54] Not only that, the content of the second part was directly influenced by the need to address and challenge the bogus sequel.[55] The remarkable aspect of this address is that Cervantes tailored some of his stories to connect with and confront Avellaneda’s volume.[56] He consulted the bogus volume and repeatedly used the fictional characters, Don Quixote and Sancho, to build up themes and scenes that could show the impropriety of Avellaneda’s work. Interestingly, some scholars have insinuated that Cervantes’ creativity may have increased and even been stimulated by the unexpected spurious sequel.[57] He finally obtained a ten year book privilege for the second part of Don Quixote.[58] After Cervantes’ death, a number of different spin-offs followed the alternative literary path already forged by Avellaneda. An obvious and logical continuation of the story was to use the character Cervantes had not killed in his sequel, Sancho Panza.[59] Sancho was given an “afterlife” in different episodes. However, none of them were as successful as the adventures he experienced in the two volumes of Don Quixote.

Michael, I. “How Don Quixote came to Oxford: The two Bodleian copies of Don Quixote, Part I (Madrid: Juan de la Cuesta, 1605)” in Truman, R. W. & Griffin, C. (eds) Culture and Society in Habsburg Spain: studies presented to R. W. Truman by his Pupils and Colleagues on the Occasion of his Retirement (London: Tamesis, 2001) pp. 95-120

[5] “Don Quixote is the first modern work of literature, because in it we see the cruel reason of identities and differences make endless sport of signs and similitudes; because in it language breaks off its old kinship with things and enters into that lonely sovereignty from which it will reappear, in its separated state, only as literature [...]” in Foucault, M. The Order of Things (London, Routledge, 2002) p. 54.

[25] For the relationship between history and Don Quixote, see Reed, W. L. An Exemplary History of the Novel (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1981) pp. 71-92. For the privilege petition and the role of the censor, see Bouza, F. “El primer lector del Quijote” Cervantes. Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America, 29.1 (Spring 2009) pp. 13-30; 13

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